Phiya Kushi's Blog: Musings on life and macrobiotics

Macrobiotics And The Myth Of Biological Superiority

August 7, 2010

One of the greatest social contributions macrobiotics has to offer as a result of its “food as the primary biological trans-formative agent” idea is that it completely exposes and debunks the myth of biological superiority, whether expressed sexually, racially, intellectually, religiously or economically. Just as degenerative diseases can strike anyone regardless of sex, race, religion, economic status and so on, macrobiotics offers a solution that is equally ubiquitous. In essence, it presents biological equality in a way that has never been done before.

The myth of biological superiority was rampant in the recent past and continues in the world today. The United States was founded over 200 years ago on the principle that “all men are created equally.” However, this grand and noble idea was not based on biology and dialectical principles of change but instead on moralistic and theological ideas. Racism and other notions of biological superiority continue to persist in the US despite being fought against during the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement, not to mention the Feminists Movement and the Gay and Lesbian Rights Movements. Even with the first Black American US President in Office today racism and other notions of biological superiority continue to exist in many parts of the country especially among circles based on extreme religious ideas. During World War II, Hitler’s Germany and the Holocaust were also founded on notions of biological superiority. Other countries and religions that promote and preserve biological homogeneity through bloodlines continue to perpetuate a myth of biological superiority, intentionally or not. These include Japan, Israel and many others.

Modern science also fails to expose and debunk the myth of biological superiority despite efforts to remain objective, unbiased and amoral. The lack of a sweeping grand vision or “unifying principle” that outlines a universal interconnectedness through dialectical transformation (“everything changes”) allows for the unguided and unprincipled development of biological superiority through genetic manipulation. Despite all attempts to manipulate the genome and introduce new species to the world, macrobiotic theory postulates that such entities will eventually adapt and transform to the natural environment or disappear. In other words, the origin of the genome is the natural environment itself and as the environment changes it creates new species.

With the macrobiotic idea that we are the product of our food and environment then, not only can diseases be reversed, our own biology can change over-time and over generations. Black people can become white people and vice versa, sexual orientation can change and all other so-called “genetic” traits can change. It could happen in one generation or it may take several generations but the mechanism of transformation always remains the same which is our food and environment. Food and environment, in turn, are the result of changing cosmological influences including the position and the movement of the Earth, the Solar System and our Galaxy, the Milky Way.

However, macrobiotic theory alone, as with any ideology, is also not immune to succumbing to the myth of biological superiority. Adherents, advocates and fanatics who believed themselves to be, for example, immune to cancer and other diseases by following rigid dietary rules found out that even themselves and people like, macrobiotic leader (and my father) Michio Kushi and his family could succumb to cancer. Such diseases thankfully serve as a reminder of our own arrogant misconceptions and delusions of superiority. It is the actual trans-formative experience of eating and living macrobiotics itself and not the theory that helps us maintain our humility and acceptance that we are result of and must abide by real forces beyond our own self-centered arrogant ideas and theories.

Thank you very much for this article, it reminds me of something that told me a teacher many years ago. There was a plant that was in danger of extintion, they could reproduce it artificially and plant a good population in its place of origin, but just after doing this a fire destroyed all the plants and dissapeared completely.

We need to be down earth and, at least, try as much as we can to be humble in all our decisions and statements, because we all need each other but still too early to achieve the Unity we long for, when we get to understand that everyone of us has and represents a piece of the whole puzzle, then we will work together to see the whole picture as One, still working on it.

Reading some of the articles written here, I understand and see that the pieces of the puzzle are alive and vibrate trying to find the ones that fit with them.